Entertainment

Driftr Travel Blog Opens its Public Beta

Driftr is a travel blogging site that I've been keeping an eye on for the past few months, though we haven't covered it here at Mashable yet. Today, Driftr opens up its public beta (moving from alpha), and the site's feature set has reached a point where you can get a complete site experience when heading over to Driftr.

The layout of Driftr is very simplistic and rather elegant, similar to Tumblr, and it formats your trips in a uniformed manner. When viewing a trip, you'll see the location marked on the map (in relation to all of your other visited locations). Further details are shown below, along with images, including suggested places to eat, visit, sleep, how to get around, and additional notes are found in the trip blog section.

Some of the new features included in today's beta release are a Recently Added section for your friends feed, a Future Trips option in your map pulldown, and a Destinations Country/State drop-down option as well. These added features work well within the architecture of Driftr's site, but still emphasize the fact that Driftr is more of a personal log for tracking one's travels and simply sharing them with others.

This approach is rather varied from what we typically find on community travel blogs, and that's because there are no action-items involved with Driftr's site. That means that listing a recommended place to stay isn't enhanced with a link to that hotel's URL, or other users that have recommended the same hotel. This is a rather closed approach to a travel blog, and will limit Driftr's long-term appeal.

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